Wi-Fi devices, for example, Wi-Fi stations (STAs) may transmit probe requests to discover appropriate basic service sets (BSS') and/or BSS' associated with an extended service set (ESS). With the proliferation of Wi-Fi devices including, for example, personal access points, personal mobile devices, sensors, meters, etc., dense networks with a large number of Wi-Fi devices may be deployed. In such dense Wi-Fi networks the large number of devices may generate an excessive number of management frames, e.g., probe request frames and/or association request/response frames. Such excessive number of management frames may cause significant contention and interference among the devices, leading to severe degradation of QoS and throughput performance. A mechanism is desired to control a Wi-Fi device's transmission behavior, for example, to associate with an access point (AP).